TNAG-0094-FCO40-130-Control-of-immigration-into-UK-from-Hong-Kong-1968 — Page 9

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territories as a whole, they thought that the woZo

backlog of vouchers for which applications were now

outstanding in respect of all the territories other

than Hong Kong would be cleared within a matter of

six to nine months, and they forsaw.. no difficulty

in operating the dependent territories' quota in a way

which would achieve the objects by which we set store

satisfaction of the claims of the smaller territories,

sufficient vouchers for Gibraltar and as substantial a

number of vouchers for Hong Kong as was received by

any other single territory in the Commonwealth. The

scheme can be operated by the Ministry of Labour with

flexibility and the more rigid system of weekly issues

of vouchers mentioned in paragraph 3 of my letter of

28 December would not in practice serve our ends so

effectively.

L As regards Hong Kong, the representatives of the

Ministry of Labour pointed out that there were two

important considerations to bear in mind.

Firstly,

the rejection rate of applicants from Hong Kong was

very high, simply because of the lack of vacancies in

the occupations for which they were seeking entry inf

the U.K. (It is of course true that nearly all the

Hong Kongers aim at employment in the catering and

restaurant trades one of the changes in the voucher scheme about to be announced is that Category A

applications for

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vouchers will henceforth be accepted only for work

which is of substantial economic or social value to

the United Kingdom).

Secondly, in their view the

effect of giving increased number of vouchers to

applicants from Hong Kong would result in the

stimulation of a much greater flow of applications

from that territory, a development which would be

unwelcome to all the Departments concerned.

15. My

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